On Thursday, Nov. 18, the students and faculty of Covenant College received an email with the title “Official Statement - Closing Second North Hall.” The administration unanimously came to the difficult decision, after previous warnings and attempts at reconciliation, to shut down Second North for disciplinary reasons. Sadness, frustration, and confusion circled campus, but not without hope for future healing.
Second North was home to 29 guys, all of whom participated in hall events similar to those of the other residence halls. Last year, they started a new friendsgiving tradition. Each week they have a prayer and praise where someone shares his testimony.
But despite the normalcy of the hall’s traditions, there have been issues with the relationship between Second North and student development for a long time. Thomas Drake, RA of Second North, said there has been animosity between the two groups for longer than he or anyone else on the hall has been there, and probably longer than the current administration and student development has been there as well.
This decision to close the hall indefinitely comes after several attempts at reconciliation and some warnings. Drake said there was a problem on the hall six or seven years ago, and in 2019, they were put on probation and warned that further infraction could result in disbandment of the hall.
At the beginning of this semester, the hall was invited into talks with student development about the situation, but change has been difficult to accomplish. Drake and other past RAs have worked with Stephen Dillon, the resident director of Carter, as an interface between the hall itself and student development to try and change things, asking what steps can be taken to mend things moving forward.
“It’s really hard to do that because of the previous relationship, and I wish that was something we could have changed before this. But I also think it’s worthy of pursuit now, I don’t think it’s over,” Drake said.
John Wylie, Associate Dean of Students and Residence Life, commented on the past attempts to reshape the culture of the hall in an email.
“It is not our practice to go into specifics,” he wrote. “We have used the full range of responses in the past hoping to change behaviors and positively shape culture.”
Brad Voyles, Vice President for student development and Dean of Students, explained in an email why this situation called for the closing of the hall, but not in much more explicit detail.
“Previous actions and warnings have not led to significant change. We have now received first-hand information regarding the hall culture and the behaviors that have followed. This has prompted us to take the current action now,” he wrote.
The lack of specific detail has caused rumors to circulate about why exactly the closure of the hall is coming now, towards the end of the semester. Residents of the hall were sent a memo with instructions on how they are to move forward, but there was a lot of speculation for the student body about what exactly happened.
“I think that the way they told us is a little bit sudden, and it's made a lot of us confused and because we don't have all the information. So I kind of wished that if they were going to do this, maybe they would have just done it quietly, or given us more information,” Abigail Cargo ‘25 said.
image by Nate Stewart
Drake did not comment on the particulars, but did give a response when asked about why he thinks the decision was made now. “It’s the build up of many different things. What I can say is as a hall, we broke the rules. Not egregiously, but we did break the rules,” he said. Administration followed through with their warning that further infraction could mean disbanding the hall, and Drake acknowledged this.
Voyles wrote this response for students who knew nothing prior to receiving the closure email:
“When presented with the information, the senior administration was unanimous in supporting this decision while also acknowledging it is a hard decision for all impacted,” he said. “We are acting with confidence the Lord can and will work through these actions. These are brothers in Christ who are going through a very tough time. I would hope that other students would pray for them and extend hospitality and care as they move to a new community.”
The result of the decision has been hard for everyone involved. For administration, navigating people’s responses has been challenging. “One of the hardest parts is feeling like others don't understand that this was a very difficult decision and that it was made with a deep desire for the good of the hall and the campus community overall,” Wylie said.
For those who were a part of Second North, the immediate reaction was a lot of frustration and confusion. Since then it has mostly been sadness, and grieving a loss of the community there.
“I think a lot of us feel really bad for people who might have gotten mixed up in this, especially freshmen in their first semester,” Cargo said. Drake had the same reaction.
“The freshmen have spent two months growing these awesome relationships with each other, and to be ripped from that is really hard,” he said. “These guys were just looking forward to the next three years living with their friends.”
It will continue to be difficult, but there is hope for the future. The members of the closed hall are planning on continuing to do prayer and praise, and hope to do other events together even without being able to live together. Each of the students who lived on Second North is being offered an opportunity to meet with the chaplain, and members of college administration have pursued interactions with them as well. As for how they themselves are responding to what has happened, Drake offered a collective response.
“We humbly want to admit that we were wrong, and we humbly want to seek reconciliation with Covenant, with the community, with student development,” he said. “We messed up… We are good people. I mean, nobody’s a good person, but I don’t want the Covenant community to think we’re evil, sinister people. Our intentions were in the right place and our actions were unfortunately not in line with the rules. But our intentions were in the right place.”
He is hopeful that this is an opportunity for those that were on the hall to show how close they truly are and continue to make an effort to be together, even without living on Second North.